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Freedom of speech is fought at Larry Flynt's Hustler, not Michelangelo's David. If lots of people aren't annoyed or even offended, nothing is getting done. If
by CapitalistCartr 10y ago
Freedom of speech is fought at Larry Flynt's Hustler, not Michelangelo's David. If lots of people aren't annoyed or even offended, nothing is getting done. If society is comfortable, no wrongs are being righted. Freedom is the right to be wrong, your right to do that which others disagree with. This includes saying statements that discomfort others.
Every bit of progress society has made has been fought for, tooth and nail, by making the majority uncomfortable, then changing their minds. Having lots of noise is the result of lots of people talking freely.
For instance, pornography isn't gross to me. I only get to read it because Freedom of Speech protects me from your prudishness. Loudness only drowns out others in an unmoderated forum. Which is not part of the Freedom. Also why I prefer HN and the like.
- fatbird 10y agoI don't think we should ban pornography. The gist of my comment was the last line, that this mode of maximizing freedom of expression actually diminishes other expressions of speech, which can result in a net loss of freedom of expression. Put a bit differently, what we protect is the number of different topics on which an individual may express themselves. We're maximizing freedom of expression by subject matter. But what we've continually observed over the last decade or so is that there's a lot of other metrics by which we have much less freedom of expression than we might think.